a fairytale in pieces
by fallen-chan
Summary: the fall of one regime and the story of a second. there is a broken kingdom before them and a prince whose crown is more blood than gold. AU, mild Itachi/Shisui
1. Chapter 1

**title:** a fairytale in pieces (part 1/?)  
><strong>summary:<strong> the fall of one regime and the story of a second. there is a broken kingdom before them and a prince whose crown is more blood than gold.

**disclaimer:** i don't own anyone.

* * *

><p>The first time he meet Uchiha Itachi, it is Monday. Outside, the rain falls in heavy sheets, battering the trees until the ground is littered in fragments of pink and green, tiny newborn buds drowning in muddy puddles. He shift uneasily, the tie looped around his neck too tight, the starched fabric of his shirt uncomfortably rigid against his skin, and one of the black-suited men lining the room frowns until he stands still once more, hands pressed against his legs. There is a certain tension in the air that even he, all of seven years old, cannot ignore; and his hands involuntarily curl up, bunching the neatly-pressed fabric of his pants. When the door swings open, he hurriedly attempts to smooth the wrinkles from his pants only for a warning hand to touch his shoulder. Today is <em>important<em>– historic, even – and he can read it in the weight on his shoulder, the way the man standing by the door stiffens and the friendliness melts from his face, replaced by pursed lips and the trademark Uchiha eyes.

The ceremony itself passes in a blur of red-black eyes and the stifling weight of centuries of formality embodied in old men with skin so thin he can see the blue veins running across the backs of their hands (_and it would be so easy for him, for the man standing behind the straight-backed chairs, for the boy with blank eyes and fine-boned hands to just reach out and cut to kill_ – _but there are hundreds of years of tradition in their blood and there is a _reason_ why the Uchiha will never collapse inward_). He remembers a boy more robotic than human as his eyes flicker from red to black to red again, always so empty that he thinks he could replace that quietude with death and never know the difference, and his mind conjures up fanciful images of the Uchiha as a clan of puppets on a string.

He is only vaguely aware of stepping forward and bowing, presenting himself to the new clan heir when the ceremony ends and the men begin to file out. The clan heir's fingers, long and thing, scream _fragile_ and he is reminded of birds and their thin hollow bones; but there is an unexpected strength in the boy's grip. He walks away with the memory of centuries of bloody history staring at him from behind the vaunted _Sharingan_ eyes, of a quiet sort of self-assurance not even Uchiha Fugaku has achieved (though the rumor is that the man tries and tries and _tries_so hard to grasp that quiet self-assurance in place of the arrogance he openly wears on his face).

Uchiha Shisui thinks of clan history ("_Uchiha Madara forged a clan from warring factions of the bloodline and tempered it in battle against the Senju, building our glorious legacy with his bare hands" – but the teachers will never mention that when power was displayed before Madara, he grasped it and squeezed it, plucked the eyes of out his brother's head and smiled a terribly hungry smile_) and wonders if tiny fine-boned Uchiha Itachi will be the one to rescue a clan drowning in hostility and carry them to their rightful place in the sky.

He will never admit it as long as Fugaku-sama still stands at the head of the clan, but he tells himself each night that it is Itachi, not Fugaku, who will rouse the sleeping genius of the clan and bring about the change they have spent the long years since Uchiha Izuna's death striving for.

One day, he wakes up to the sound of gunfire, men shouting orders and screaming as the walls shake from the force of detonating explosives. Smoke creeps under the door and he throws himself off the bed when a body crashes through the window, fingers scrabbling under the nightstand for the gun that fell out from under his pillow. Shisui spares all of a second to shoot (to execute) the man lying face-up on the floor before crawling to the dresser, fumbling fingers pulling out spare ammunition and extra weapons. The acrid stench of burning wood warns him away from the hallway and so he pulls on shoes in a hurry, staying close to the wall as he makes his way to the broken window.

Shisui belatedly realizes, as he pulls himself up onto the narrow windowsill using his bed for leverage, that the corpse on his floor has _Sharingan_ eyes. His fingers slip from the edge of the window and he tumbles down into the garden, where the thorny shrubs scratch at his arms and legs and face, and he curses his clumsiness before his brain registers - late once again - that the smoke billowing out his window is coming from the stick of dynamite that narrowly missed his head. He tells his brain to stop gibbering in fear and _work_ (because goddamnit he's not going to die here, under his own window, because someone was stupid enough to miss their mark) before he rolls to his feet and, abandoning the tattered vestiges of his dignity, runs until he rounds a corner. The sound of gunfire is louder now and his fingers curl tighter around the butt of his handgun as he peers around the neat line of sakura trees. His eyes bleed to red when he sees Itachi, dwarfed by the heavily-built men trying to corner him against a sliding door and he is in motion long before his brain catches up with the rest of his body, aiming and firing and ducking over and over until it is (temporarily) just him and Itachi and cooling bodies spread over the uniform grey stones of the rock garden. His shoulder throbs painfully and he can feel the blood dripping down his leg into his sock and he is steadfastly refusing to look down at the faces of the dead bodies between him and Itachi (but even then he can recognize that everything is all Uchiha dead and _oh god the clan is tearing itself apart how will they defend against the Hyuuga, the vultures, and is that body in the corner his father whatishedoinghere_) and he is quite certain that if he sees the eyes of the men he is fighting then he will never be able to shoot and -

"Are you coming?" Shisui blinks, startled, and he almost misses the flash of amusement in red eyes before Itachi's face is schooled blank again. Thin fingers press a new gun into his hands and the boy (who is not really a boy, was probably never _just _a boy) he has (apparently) given his allegiance to walks out of the garden, stepping over bodies as though they were just so much trash scattered on the polished wood floorboards. He follows Itachi, uncomfortably aware of the fact that the dark splashes on color are probably blood, and pretends that he does not know the charred bodies heaped against the walls belong to his clan. (If he simply calls all of the dead "enemies" then is that much easier to swallow the bile that rises in his throat when he remembers his father turning, face twisted in a snarl, _Sharingan_ eyes twisting and morphing into something strange and foreign, even as the blood bubbles up in his mouth from a shot to the lung - from _his_gun - when the man mouths his name.)

They stop outside the _shoji_ separating the clan head's quarters from the rest of the house and Shisui swallows hard when he sees the smears of blood on the paper, the long jagged tears where fingers broke through. Now more than ever, he is beginning to understand the magnitude of this (_rebellionrevoltuprising_) tragedy. He stops just before he runs into Itachi, mouth twisting into a pained grimace when he sees a tiny chubby hand poking out from a room to the side. Against his better judgment, he steps to the side and slides the _shoji_ all the way to the left; he hears someone gasp and he pivots instinctively, bringing his gun to bear on a cringing doctor's head. For a moment, white-hot fury runs through his veins and his finger dig into the butt of the gun dangling from his hand and his eyes bleed back to red and he wants to go hunt down whoever is responsible for _this_ and hurt the perpetrator over and over and _over_ because this is so much more personal now and that is his _mother_, slumped against the wall with a bullet between her eyes, and on the other side of the room is Mikoto lying face-down in a puddle of her own blood and the tiny corpse by his feet belongs to _Sasuke_, belong to the cheerful little boy who always hugged his legs whenever he brought messages for Fugaku-sama.

Someone coughs, breaking the uneasy silence. The doctor cringes even more and Shisui realises, rather belatedly, that his hands are trembling so much he is no longer aiming at the man. Itachi's hand on his shoulder is a light weight, just enough pressure to remind him that the dead are just that (_and you have a job to do Shisui-kun, or are you betraying me too?_). His arms drop to his side and his reflection in the broken mirror on the wall behind the doctor's head smiles a thin, strained smile. One side of his face is smeared with dried blood that flakes off whenever he moves his mouth; in comparison, Itachi's fractured reflection is _perfect_(as usual). If he hadn't seen the fighting for himself, he never would have guessed that the younger teen had been defending himself against family not even an hour ago.

(Shisui later tells himself that this is the moment he understands what it means to be the head of the clan - the man who can - who _will_- lead them from this tragedy with his head held high, using bloody hands to wipe out dissent. Much, much later, he privately acknowledges that perhaps this is when he begins to think of Uchiha Itachi as the beautiful man who will rescue them from their decline in a blaze of glory, instead of the breakable boy with fine bones, the boy who never quite seemed to fit in.)

When Shisui follows Itachi into the room that was once Fugaku-sama's study, he anticipates the body slumped in the black leather chair, the blood congealing on the bullet-ridden surface of the heavy wooden desk. Bile still rises in his throat when he sees brain matter splattered against the tall back of the leather chair and he knows he will still see (his boss, brutally murdered by family, the end of the Uchiha as he knows it) this when he closes his eyes each night. Seeing this _hurts_, even more so than seeing his father raising his weapon against the heir-cum-boss with angry red eyes, even more than seeing his mother's corpse. This is what makes the failed rebellion official.

This is what proves that the Uchiha is _weak_, splintered into fractious groups that prowl all day looking for weaknesses in each other. Shisui knows (with the same certainty with which he knows himself) that in their current state, the Uchiha will be overtaken and crushed within a year.

The sound of movement against the hardwood floors alerts him to the man crumpled in the corner. Itachi is turning as well, but from his position Shisui can see the glint of polished chrome in the weak sunlight and he sees _red_.

He doesn't stop shooting until he runs out of bullets. When Itachi's long fingers curl around the barrel of his gun, forcing it down, he pauses in his one-handed fumbling for more ammunition and his cousin pulls the gun away from him, setting it aside on the desk.

It seems like an eternity before Shisui realizes that the bullet-riddled corpse, brain matter splattered against the walls and dripping down to the floor, is the man he killed. The realization that his _Sharingan_ has only just deactivated strikes quickly after and then Itachi's thin arms are folding around him as his cousin whispers in his ear "be strong Shisui-kun; I'll need your help in rebuilding the clan."


	2. Chapter 2

**title:** a fairytale in pieces (part 2/?)**  
><strong>

**disclaimer:** i don't own anyone.

* * *

><p>Rebuilding the clan is an arduous process, one that Shisui sometimes despairs of ever finishing on those late nights when he's pouring over reports in his office, re-drawing the lines of Uchiha-claimed territory on a worn map of the country. While the clan has <em>finally<em>consolidated its hold on the outlying reaches of former Uchiha strongholds, he knows their position is fragile; not even the murder of the former clan head can bind together a clan that boasts of turning ambition into an art form. Without an outlet for the simmering fury, it's just as likely that the Uchiha will once again self-destruct as it is that they will return to the glorious days of old, when the clan was spoken of with reverence, with fear. They have been lucky thus far; the Senju are too soft to take the opportunity presented by Uchiha Fugaku's murder and they hold their allies back from doing so, claiming that there is no need to re-ignite old hostilities.

Shisui marvels at their sheer stupidity when he discusses the implications of the newest announcements made by the Senju clan. The Hyuuga are up in arms over what they perceive to be a lack of action from their leaders and the newest set of reports from their spies indicate that for once, the allied clans that form the Senju's block of support are beginning to question their leader. "Let them devour each other" Itachi tells him one night, capturing his pawn with a knight as they play a game of chess to relax. "Their weakness will become our strength."

When the clan elders are presented with Itachi's proposed plan of action, they retire to their conference rooms with their bodyguards and their tea long before Itachi finished explaining his reasoning. Shisui smothers a smile and raises his _sakazuki_in his cousin's direction before downing his sake in one swallow.

(He thinks, later that night, that those old men and women, conservatives from birth to death, were hooked as soon as Itachi told them "We will return to the ways of the past. Let them weaken themselves while we build our strength. They will begin to crack and we will be the hammer that breaks them beyond repair." Itachi's fingers brush against his when he hands his cousin a draft of the speech they will make before the whole clan and they grab his hand, keep him still as the younger man whispers his thanks into his ear.)

One week later, Shisui stands to the side of a raised dais, eyes scanning the gathered crowd - the entirety of the Uchiha clan, save for those out on missions - as they stand in neat rows, hands resting at their sides. Itachi walks out to complete silence (and this silent is _reverent _in comparison to the sullen silences Uchiha Fugaku provoked, Shisui thinks to himself with no small measure of satisfaction) and his cousin displays none of the reticence that usually defines his speeches when he begins to talk.

The commotion begins toward the back of the crowd, where the youngest of the clan proper - the youngest of the new initiates, the boys and girls training for the last of their tests - are gathered. To his credit, Itachi simply raises his voice to be heard over the low chant of "Itachi-sama" that is gradually gaining momentum as he explains the new course of action the clan will take. Not even his announcement that they will lay low and rebuild their strength stifles the palpable excitement running through the clan, not when they have already heard that the Senju alliance, once a solid wall of opposition, is beginning to waver _without_ their influence. The final stage of the multi-part course of action the Uchiha will take - the stage where they finally revive, throw off centuries of oppression and seize the power that was rightfully theirs by birth - is greeted with a roar of approval that (once again) begins with the youngest of the clan and rolls through the ranks until it reaches the dais and Itachi, who stands tall on the dais with _Sharingan_eyes that reflect the resolve generations of Uchiha have cultivated.

When Itachi asks him over a game of chess, several days later, what his impression of the clan's feelings regarding their future is, Shisui smiles a smile full of teeth and reaches out to capture a red pawn, fingers curling around smooth wood. "They're excited," he says after a moment of thought. "Not just excited, though. Yours is a plan they think will actually succeed where Fugaku's plan, where your grandfather's plan, where _all_ plans since the day the Senju seized power have failed." Just this once, he allows himself to indulge in the folly of optimism (because their success is so overdue it _hurts_ to think otherwise and he is a _fool_, a mindless fool who has lost his purpose and follows a man now instead of an ideal) and he thinks to himself that perhaps there is a point to folly when the lines of tension written in his cousin's shoulders disappear.

Itachi is slow to smile but when he does, he reaches out as well, fine-boned fingers curling around Shisui's wrist. "_Our _plan" he corrects, and Shisui swallows his protest when his cousin leans over the low table, pulls him closer to press chapped lips against his.

The thin layer of glass separating him from the man splayed on a stainless steel table has never seemed thinner when the man thrashes and screams around a gag, wrists straining against leather straps as the first "H" in Uchiha is shallowly carved into his upper chest. "I asked you a question" he says coolly, tapping his fingers against the papers recovered from another captured agent (an Inuzuka, as opposed to the Hyuuga lying before him). "I expect an answer when I return." Shisui turns to the man next to him, one of the best interrogators the Uchiha has produced in this generation, and the man nods tersely before walking into the room as well.

He turns away from the window, somewhat content with the knowledge that the Hyuuga will eventually sing his secrets like the caged songbird he is, and accepts another sheaf of papers from a messenger. Six spies captured within the new month is an impressive achievement that speaks highly of their new security measures and these spies represent a larger slice of the Senju alliance, which proves, more than anything anyone might say, that the future is unfolding exactly as planned. Two Hyuuga, two Inuzuka, one Aburame, and one Yamanaka - almost all of the main clans behind the Senju - rest in their palm now, kept in underground facilities in the bowels of the Uchiha clan compound. Shisui knows that even farther underground, the pride and joy of the Senju alliance, their seemingly perfect mesh of inheritances - passed down from generation to generation through carefully-crafted eugenics programs - is being unraveled so that the _Sharingan _can one day counter it.

Itachi meets him near the end of the sterile white hallway, passing him an unmarked manilla envelope and accepting the sheaf of papers in return. "How goes the interrogation?" his cousin asks as they wait for a stretcher to pass, acknowledging the salute its armed escort gives him with a nod. Shisui shifts so he can see the man strapped onto it, bloody bandages covering empty eye sockets. The brand on his arm reads 'D-H-M' - a Hyuuga then, a spy with _unsealed_ _Byakugan _eyes who is dying and not worth the effort of interrogating. Itachi's fingers tap out a pattern on his back and Shisui acknowledges it with the tiniest of nods. He turns away from the stretcher, side-stepping into the elevator as the door slides open; when Itachi follows him in he waits until the doors close before admitting (reluctantly, though not without a hint of admiration) that if nothing else, the Hyuuga are well-trained in the art of keeping stubbornly silent.

(Shisui tells himself, to his dying day, that he did not blush when Itachi steps closer to him and whispers in his ear that he _would _know about the art of keeping silent through sheer willpower.)

Their relative inability to force captured spies to spill their secrets aside, the Uchiha are continuously maneuvering themselves into a position of greater power. He tells Itachi as much, flipping through the folder quickly before returning it to the younger man. "The Hyuuga must be getting desperate for detailed information if they're putting their precious _Byakugan_ at risk on common espionage missions" he explains when the other brunette gives him a look that screams 'elaborate'. "The _Byakugan _is generic enough that we can develop a counter for most of the common Hyuuga techniques now that we have a set of unsealed eyes to compare to the two sets of sealed eyes."

Neither of them mentions the fact that even developing counters for the _Byakugan _will be useless unless they discover a way to nullify the threat the Senju and their unpredictable medley of techniques presents. Even with the Senju Alliance wavering, the Senju themselves have always been, historically speaking, a formidable opponent when pressed. That even Uchiha Madara was once defeated by his Senju counterpart speaks highly of their techniques (though all of the evidence suggests that pacifist tendencies are finally starting to take their toll).

(In the dead of the night, they pour over profiles of the Senju and their leaders, beginning with none other than Hashirama and ending with Hiruzen, his students, and the spawn of his teachings. The beginnings of a plan form slowly and Shisui reminds himself that taking advantage of an enemy's weakness is nothing more than proper strategic warfare when he signs his name below Itachi's. Cool fingers curl around his wrist and Itachi reminds him of Sasuke, shot at point-blank range and buried so young, of his mother and Mikoto and the slaughter of Fugaku's closest kin. Shisui buries himself in the cold rage those memories evoke and he smiles thinly when he tips his head down to meet chapped lips.)

The Uchiha have spent three long years rebuilding and restructuring their clan into something the public can accept without question and it is beginning to show in the way the civilians redistribute themselves. Itachi's face is plastered on newspapers and magazines, bold headlines proclaiming him as the clan head of the future (and it is _right_ that they do so, because what other clan head has thrown out centuries of tradition and decreed that the women of the clan could be more than demure housewives, or publicly announced that the era of exorbitant pizzos was over?) and singing his praises. Even as Itachi builds their fortune on the backs of the multinational corporations that are beginning to flock to Uchiha-controlled territory, Shisui paints the Uchiha clan as compassionate and humanitarian, a clan that actually _cares_about the civilians it nominally protects.

("Of course, there will always be glitches given the size of the Uchiha" he tells journalists as he oversees the distribution of food, water, and medical supplies to the survivors of a fire that destroyed two downtown apartment complexes. "We are, after all, the first clan to openly encourage our dependents to discuss their problems with us." Shisui smiles when a young boy comes up to hug his legs, handing him a gift-wrapped package, and the cameras flash hungrily, devouring the public image he paints for the clan.)

Tonight, the streets surrounding the convention center the Senju have booked for their annual attempt at promoting inter-clan relations bristle with armed guards. Beneath the flickering street lights, the battle lines are written in by the make of the cars; a no-man's land runs between each sector and it narrows with each passing patrol.

Inside, the battle lines shift and blur. The Senju, forgoing modesty with their expensive sedans and coterie of suits, hide behind a mismatched medley of allies. The Hyuuga eschew tradition (and their arrival prompts a riot of whispers and open stares); Hyuuga Hiashi brings his clan and they come in full-force, ranks of men filing out of armored limousines in black silk kimonos, the five _kamon_ emblazoned on each screaming their affiliation. (One of Itachi's bodyguards, a relic of the old guard that once accompanied Fugaku, bristles at their arrogance. His reaction is one that the Senju advisers copy and across the room, a tall blond shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.) One by one, the clans file in, mingling cautiously beneath the watchful eyes of security (that is not so much security as it is an unspoken promise that just this one night they will pretend to be a collection of normal civil people, for all that the bad blood lying between them forever rears its ugly head and whispers "_hello do you remember me and the thousand quiet deaths that make me what I am?"_).

Shisui takes care to keep Itachi within his line of sight at all times, never more than a few steps away from his cousin for all that the Hyuuga he converses with works in subtle insults as they bare their teeth at each other in a forced smile that resembles nothing more than a pained grimace. He takes pains to ensure that his smile is always one degree warmer than those of his conversation partners and, when he passes by a particularly stiff bodyguard, discretely reminds the man to stop looking like he has a ten-foot pole up his ass and _smile_. In order for Itachi's plan to work they must first win over public opinion, something that is surprisingly easy so long as they are not up against Namikaze Minato and his thrice-damned ability to charm the world. (That the Uchiha's new-found popularity worries the entirety of the Senju Alliance is an added bonus in the eyes of the clan.) In a public setting like this, contrasting themselves to the Hyuuga, the Inuzuka, to _all_of the Senju Alliance and the Senju themselves has never been easier.

He finds himself standing before Namizake Minato shortly before the gala ends and allows himself the tiniest bit of regret over what has yet to come. The man _tries_, which is more than Shisui can say about any of his predecessors; but, there are centuries of oppression to account for and there are things in motion now that cannot be stopped. Shisui reminds himself that the Senju ordered the death of Fugaku, murdered his mother, Mikoto, innocent little _Sasuke _in cold blood, and draws on the sense of cold outrage that brings when the blond strikes up a conversation.

He thinks of the resignation hidden behind forced cheer in blue eyes when he compiles the intelligence gathered at the gala and muses that perhaps the man knows that his efforts at reconciliation are wasted, that he has begun an inevitable journey with no end in sight but tragedy.

One week later, the Hyuuga send an assassin. Shisui personally oversees the man's interrogation and execution.

Half a week later, Namikaze Minato opens the package on his desk and stills at the sight of a head with empty eye-sockets.

In the Uchiha compound, Itachi smiles.


End file.
